The recreational and cultural game of Beer Pong is a drinking game involving two teams, plastic cups, ping pong balls and a game table. Two sets of usually ten, six, or three plastic cups are filled with beer, alcohol, soda or any drinkable liquid and placed at either end of the game table in a triangular formation. Each team alternates turns throwing the ping pong balls at the opposing team's plastic cups. When the shooting or serving team throws a ball and lands a ball in one of the opposing team's plastic cups, the opposing team must drink the liquid (before or after the ball is removed from the cup) and remove that plastic cup from the table. Ping Pong balls are recycled and the game continues until one team's plastic cups are entirely removed from the table. As one can imagine, not every ping pong ball thrown will land into the opposing team's cups. Ping pong balls tend to bounce off the game table and roll along very dirty floors or grounds in and around the surrounding game area. Traditionally, ping pong balls that have been landed in an opposing teams cups are rinsed off by dunking the ping pong ball into a separate plastic “wash” cup. After many rinses the wash cup inevitably becomes dirty and filled with a variety of contaminates including but not limited to: debris, sand, dirt, lint, and hairs. Ultimately, the purpose of the wash cup is defeated as the ping pong balls are not sufficiently rinsed by a dirty wash cup. Using a dirty wash cup increases the chances that the returned ping pong ball contains contaminates despite being rinsed. The present application proposes a solution to this problem by effectively rinsing the dirty ping pong ball and enabling the return of a rinsed ping pong ball every time. In addition, the ping pong ball is rinsed each time in a clean environment by uncontaminated fluid thereby decreasing the chances that the returned ping pong ball is dirty. Traditional methods of playing beer pong are represented in FIG. 1. In FIG. 1 a pair of opponents are shown participating in a ping pong game that is typically referred to as “beer pong.” During this game, the game ball or ping pong ball is exchanged between sides in an effort to deposit the ping pong ball into at least one cup on the opponent's side, forcing the opponent to consume the liquid within the cup on their side. From time to time, the ping pong ball will exit the table and land on a floor supporting the ping pong table and the opponents. This floor is not always the most sanitary floor as it is typically the floor of a tavern. There may be things such as peanut shells, etc., or other debris associated with bar rooms on the floor. As shown in FIG. 1 the separate plastic cup known as the wash cup is shown off to the side of the game play table. The present application is a separate device which can be placed anywhere.
Other traditional ball cleaning devices known in the art typically involve devices that use abrasive brushes that spin at high speeds to clean a ball, usually a ball bearing, bowling ball or golf ball but none of those devices and mechanisms are capable of cleaning a lightweight ping pong ball. Though the present application can be adapted to clean any game ball of any weight, the present application cleaning mechanism is a multi-stage process involving washing and rinsing using streams of fluid and rotation by air and no abrasive cleaning solutions. In addition, typical ball cleaning devices do not allow for the return of the ball through air. In another embodiment, the reservoir of the device may contain abrasive cleaning solutions.
Portable ball cleaning devices are typically not designed for individual home use nor are they portable. Such devices usually are fixed in a location and cannot be moved nor are typical devices compact enough to set on an indoor dining room or living room.
The present disclosure provides game ball cleaning assemblies and methods that can be used to wash the ping pong ball after it has exited the table and becomes less than sanitary. None of the art described above addresses all of the issues that the present application does.